We are finally home!!

After a couple of agruments, a few tears and many bruises we finally got everything moved into our house yesterday afternoon! Luckily Brenton's friend in Montana was selling an old moving van for $500. Brenton bought it and it came in really handy (note: Brenton wants everyone to know if you keep your foot out of it it gets 20mpg). With the moving van we managed to get almost all my furniture it one load (I don't have a lot of furniture but I do have a lot of recipe books which consisted of another load). With my mighty muscles, I helped move the couch and bedroom furniture (hence all the bruises).

We are both very happy to be in our house, and now the sorting, more cleaning and decorating and all the other joys of homeownership has begun!

The cats are settling in nicely. I brought them over on Thursday night, and poor Alley would not get out of her carrier for the longest time. Brenton and I went out to eat, and when we came back Alley was out of the carrier. Athena had immediately gotten out of her carrier, and found a nice hiding spot in the basement. It was actually too nice, and I had to plug it up! They both slept by the furnace the first night, but last night they slept with me. Athena (everyone's favorite cat) pretty much goes where I go (she is upstairs in Brenton's room laying on the windowsill above my head as I type this). I know in a few days they will both have found spots to sunbathe.

And Emma, well, what can I say? Anyone that has met her knows that as long as her boyfriend (that would be Brenton) is around she is okay! She has to be wherever the action is which means she has to be right under your feet when you are trying to move an extremely heavy couch into the house! Life is hard for poor Emma!

Over 1800 miles...

and while I'm glad to be home, I've got so much to do before we officially move in this week!

I just got back from Washington, DC from the American Library Association (ALA) conference

(and no, I didn't get a chance to go out and play!). I was too busy with my meetings. The one program I did get to see was really good. It was about marketing in the libraries something I'm extremely interested in.

Tomorrow we clean the house, and move a few of my things in. Thursday, we'll hopefully move everything else in. If not, Friday we should have it done!

I can't wait to be in our house! No more apartment living! No more sneaking Emma in and out! No more having a quiet curfew (we have to be quiet from 10pm-8am, which is a good thing for the most part except when I want to get a load of laundry done in the morning before work)!

One more thing:

Happy Birthday Grandma!! I love you!

Working around the windows...

I'm going to include a few pictures of the trim work but to be honest with ya'll, they didn't turn out that well. So, I guess everyone will just have to visit us to see what it looks like!

You can also see in one of the pictures the crappy blinds that are hanging up. When I go home in August, I'm going to go to Interiors by Diane, and meet with the awarding winning Diane Gewirtz and her wonderful assistants to get some help with window treatments.

Give me color!

We have color on the walls! This past weekend we finished up painting the walls and ceilings, and I have to say we did an excellent job! And I realized that I'm not as fit as what I thought I was. I was so sore on Sunday. I also managed to get some of the trim work done, and again pleasantly pleased with the results. Brenton has begun to do the trim work, and he is doing a great job. He keeps telling me he is "enjoying the process", as well as remind me to do the same.

Here are a few pictures of the living room, bedroom and now what Brenton is referring to as the yoga room (originally known as the baby room and then the log cabin room). Oh! I suppose I should mention the colors- living/yoga room = Candlelight Yellow; bedroom = Celery Sprig (something like that).

Living Room pics:




Bedroom pics:

Lions, Tigers and Bears...Oh My!

Okay, no bears but plenty of lions and tigers. The previous owners had a thing for them! And log cabins! As you can see in the pictures below they put border of lions and tigers up in the living room, and log cabin border in the other room (which was previously known as the baby room but now is currently called the log cabin room- after staring at log cabins for two days!). I spent Monday and Tuesday peeling the wall paper off; then wiped the walls down; and spackled, which apparently I went a little crazy doing according to Brenton. Whatever!

Yesterday I was finally able to put the primer on. I was so excited! We even put some of the color I choose for the living room and log cabin room up (Candlelight Yellow it is called). Pictures of that will come soon. This weekend we will be busy painting the walls in our bedroom and the ceilings. And the best news: wood floors! Beautiful wood floors in the living room, log cabin room and bedroom!



Living Room



Living Room



Log Cabin Room

Wood Floors!

It's Official! We're Homeowners!!

Well, we signed papers after papers; promised our first born; gave a vial of our blood, and finally, were given the keys to our house!

We're homeowners!

Yahoo!!

It is getting closer...

June 11 is almost here! Why is this date important you ask? Well, we are closing on our house! Yahoo!

We started the hunt for the perfect place in March. I almost thought we'd never find something we could both agree on. Brenton wanted a big garage, and I wanted the house to be bigger than my apartment. We did a lot of driving around looking at places to find the perfect place. Sometimes, Brenton would find the perfect garage, but the house would be, well small. Sometimes very small. Sometimes, I would find the perfect house but the garage would be small. Or non-existent.

We called a realtor and amazingly the second house we looked at we LOVED! We BOTH loved it!! I suppose that is the amazing thing! The garage isn't huge but Brenton has BIG ideas for it, and gets so excited when explaining to me all the changes he wants to do with it! The yard is great for Emma to run around in. The current (and soon to be previous) owners did do a lot of work to the house. They put a fence around the backyard, deck, new siding and insulation (thank you soon to be previous owners!). Of course we'll do some changes to the work that they did inside the house. New paint for starters. And it appears that the floors under the carpet is hard wood (we did a little peeking and saw it). So, we are going to rip the carpet out and redo the floors.

We'll keep everyone updated in the blog of everything that we do and provide before and after pictures!

Thanks for reading!

Here is a picture of our new home taken this spring: